I have been looking into business case examples for enterprise 2.0. Starting with a business challenge or set of challenges in the best way to start with any technology implementation and enterprise 2.0 is no exception. Forrester wrote in a recent report, TechRadar™ For I&KM Pros: Enterprise Web 2.0, “Wikis are most successful when sponsored by business leaders and connected to business processes.” The need for this alignment and sponsorship applies to all Enterprise 2.0 implementations. The business process alignment often provides the opportunity for a business case and the executive sponsorship often demands it. This is a good thing for ensuring success. I found an excellent post, The Business Case for Enterprise 2.0, by Oscar Berg on The Content Economy that addresses this issue. Oscar wrote about three benefit points:
“Travel (and environmental) costs will decrease as a lot of face-to-face meetings can be replaced with virtual meetings.
Efficiency and productivity will increase as we get faster access to the information we need to carry out our tasks (since information will be easier to discover, access, find and share).
We will avoid costly misunderstandings that cause redundant work, rework, bad decisions or delays (since we have the means to communicate more frequently and efficiently with each other).”
I addressed the first point recently (see - Enterprise 2.0 can Save Money and, at the Same Time, Help with Green IT Initiatives). I think the next two also provide good targets and will become more concrete if the task improvements and reduction of “redundant work, rework, bad decisions or delays” are tied to measurable business processes so we can look for improvements. Oscar also offers some useful best practices to increase the possibility of positive impacts on these target measures concluding with taking a “proactive rather than passive attitude towards new opportunities, always assessing value before risk.”
In my next post on this topic I am going to explore a long discussion thread that came on of the 2008 Enterprise 2.0 conference on Building the Business case for Enterprise 2.0. I plan to continue to address this theme in future posts beyond these two.
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